


Old Man Out of Time

by kenchang



Series: Old Man Logan [1]
Category: Wolverine (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 19:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16024439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenchang/pseuds/kenchang
Summary: Natasha Romanov goes missing after a mission into enemy territory. When the government refuses to rescue one of their own, and with time running against him, Old Man Logan carves a bloody path across the snow in search of his friend.





	Old Man Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken liberty with the characters and situation, so don't expect too much accuracy with the source material. It's only fan fiction after all. It's not really them.

I was the best there was at what I did. But that was ages ago. I hope I'm still good enough to get the job done. For Natasha's sake.

I'm a man out of time. I belong in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where super villains rule. But for some reason I'm neither smart enough to explain nor understand, I was pulled to this alternate past. Then I learn that the Wolverine of this reality, my younger, alternate superhero self is dead. It's as if the gods brought me here to replace him. So what do I do? Why, I do exactly what he would have done. I hit every sleazy watering hole I can find and get myself sauced. Which is a lot easier, now that the healing factor ain't so damn good.

Was doing just that a couple of days ago, when Clint Barton, also known as Hawkeye of the Avengers and an agent of SHIELD, walked in and sat next to me.

"Natasha's missing," he told me. "She was sent on an intelligence gathering mission in Siberia, but we lost contact with her days ago."

"So why doesn't SHIELD send a rescue team for her?", I asked.

"Because the mission was accomplished. She sent us the sensitive information we needed, but she didn't show up at the extraction point. You know how SHIELD is. The mission is all that matters. The agents are expendable. Logan, my hands are tied. You're all I've got. You're all she's got."

I couldn't save the Black Widow of my reality. How could I say no to another chance at saving her now?

#

So here I am in the cold night at a small Siberian town. Clint was only able to give me one lead, Konstantin Poteyenko, a scientist in the government's weapons division, who decided to make a little money on the side by doing some extra work for some big time Russian mob. I knock on the door to his house, and a slovenly woman with long, dark disheveled hair answers.

"I'm looking for Konstantin," I tell her in Russian.

"He doesn't live here anymore," she says bitterly. "Try the tavern down the street. That's his new home."

Then she promptly slams the door in my face before I could get another word in.

#

I manage to charm some information out of a barmaid at the tavern. Yup, still got it. She tells me that Konstantin is renting a room upstairs. I tell her I'm an old friend of his. And I must be looking less dangerous at my old age because she gives me his room number. I thank her, then walk up the stairs to Konstantin's room.

"Who are you?", Konstantin sleepily asks as he answers the door. His eyes are red, and his breath smells like a distillery.

"I'm a friend of Olga's," I answer. That's the name Natasha used for her cover.

And the moment he hears the name, the sleep leaves his eyes. He immediately tries to shut the door on me. I effortlessly force myself into the room with one hand.

"Please don't hurt me! Please don't hurt me!", he whimpers.

"I won't if you do the smart thing and just tell me where she is," I tell him.

"They're holding her at a remote factory owned by the mob on the outskirts of town."

"Write the address down for me."

He does as I say then hands me a small piece of paper. His hand was trembling bad but I can still make out his handwriting. I stuff the paper in my jacket pocket.

"There. See?", I tell him. "You eggheads really are smart. Now, we don't have to waste time with all of that nasty torture."

He starts to relax some. I'm just about to walk out the door when he says, "She seduced me, you know. Destroyed my marriage."

"She never put a gun to your head, bub," I reply, my back still to him.

"Oh, please! What is she to you? A friend? A coworker? A relative? Beautiful young woman like that, I guarantee you've thought about it. Unless you've already had her. Like I've had," He lights himself a cigarette to calm his nerves. "What kind of man could possibly resist?"

"I dunno. A faithful one?"

He chuckles bitterly. "Look at me," he says. "I'm unattractive and out of shape. Never even been with a beautiful woman my whole life until I met Olga." He takes a long drag on his cigarette. Then he has this faraway look in his eyes. "She made me fall in love with her. Made me think that she loved me back. If you ask me, the slut's right where she belongs, getting exactly what she deserves."

I feel for the guy. I really do. In the pitiless world of cloak-and-dagger, small fish like Konstantin and his wife get caught in the cross fire all the time. But nobody talks to me about my friend like that.

I turn around, then knock him out with a single punch right in the face! His body is airborne for an entire second before crashing down to the wooden floor. The drunk patrons are rowdy at the bar below, so I doubt anyone heard anything. My skeleton is covered in an unbreakable metal called Adamantium. This includes my knuckles. So a punch from me is like being hit with a crowbar. If I hadn't pulled my punch, I could have easily killed him.

#

Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. I was one of the first, if not the first, to teach her how to fight, how to survive. Well, not this Natasha, technically. The Natasha of my alternate universe. This Natasha was trained by the younger, alternate dimension me-.

You know what? Let's just drop all that confusing, sci-fi bullshit. Point is, by teaching Natasha how to fight, I wonder if I'm indirectly responsible for getting her into this kind of life. Oh, I do that a lot. Blame myself for nearly all the ills of the world. But that's cool. That's what the drinking's for.

The factory's ground floor entrances are too well guarded. Way too many big, bad guys with automatic weapons. That's OK. I'm planning on getting in from the roof. See, they're not expecting to be intruded by a man who has three metal blades hidden in each forearm. I sneak towards an unguarded wall, making sure that I don't get caught in the building's floodlights. Then I pop my claws out through the gaps between my knuckles. I use the claws to scale the wall. It's a slow and grueling climb. I suppose it would be easier if I had claws in my feet, too instead of relying on just the strength of my arms to pull my entire weight up several floors.

My arms and shoulders are burning by the time I make it to the top. I peek over the ledge. There's just one mobster armed with a rifle stationed on the roof. I wait for him to turn his back to me, then I vault over the barrier and rush towards him.

I try to be stealthy, but he still hears my hurried steps. It's not like I'm wearing ninja footwear. He spins around too late. I thrust the blades in my fist right under his chin all the way through the top of his head. He doesn't even make a sound. His body slackens. If he felt any pain, he only felt it for a split second. I retract the blades and let the corpse fall.

I blame myself for a lot of things. Guilt and I are old friends. But I'm not gonna lose any sleep over the death of one hoodlum.

#

I enter through the roof door and start searching the floors one by one. Which is actually not that hard if you're a mutant with powerful olfactory senses. I pick up Natasha's scent in no time. It leads me to one of the lower floors with no further incident from any other armed thug, until a door suddenly swings open to my left.

I quickly leap upward, grab onto some pipes, and hoist myself up before I get spotted. A man exits the room. He zips up his pants, so I assume that's the men's room. Maybe I can catch someone alone and unawares in there, with his pants down, so to speak, and interrogate him regarding their prisoner's whereabouts.

I wait for the man to leave, then I silently drop to the floor. I open the door, and I'm shocked by what I see. It's not the men's room.

#

I find Natasha naked and spread-eagled on a bed, her wrists and ankles bound to the bedposts, a blank expression on her face, eyes staring into nothingness. I remember the guy that zipped up his pants earlier, and I suddenly regret not having killed him.

"Natasha. Natasha!", I whisper close to her ear. "Christ, what did they do to you, kid?"

To my surprise, her eyes focus when she recognizes me, as if waking from a dream. Or a nightmare, I suppose, in this case. Then her tearstained face lights up.

"Logan?!", she exclaims.

"Shhh!", I say, putting a finger to her lips.

Then I pop out the claws and cut the ropes around her wrists. She immediately sits upright and wraps her arms around me.

"You scared me with that thousand yard stare, darlin'," I tell her. "Thought you were dead."

"I took my mind someplace else," she explains. "Could you blame me?"

I give her my jacket. Unfortunately, I'm a short guy. Natasha's actually taller than me, so the jacket doesn't even manage to cover her midriff. I'm about to free her legs when the door opens.

"My turn, bitch," the young man says as he enters.

Then he freezes solid when he looks up and sees me. But only for a second. He quickly pulls out a pistol from his holster. With a snarl, I lunge and disarm him! And when I say "disarm", I mean I sever the hand with the gun in it. He screams as I plunge the other set of blades into his chest. Out of anger, I drive the claws so deep into him and with so much force, that I push him out of the room and slam him against the wall outside.

"No! Stop it! Get your hands off me!", Natasha yells to drown out the young man's dying screams. Quick thinking girl.

I head back into the room and cut the ropes around her ankles, when we hear a voice from the dead man's radio.

"Yuri!", the voice calls frantically. "Secure the prisoner! We just got a call from Konstantin. Someone's coming for her right now! He could be here already!"

Son of a bitch. Maybe I should have killed that egghead afterall.

I pick up the radio and try my best to imitate Yuri's voice. "Got it, boss."

"Who's this?"

"It's Yuri."

"No, you're not. And your Russian is terrible."

"Go fuck yourself."

I throw the radio at the wall, and the device smashes into pieces.

"We gotta go right now," I tell Natasha.

I hurriedly rush into the hallway, but Natasha starts fiddling with the dead man's belt.

"What are you doing?!", I irritably ask her.

"What do you think I'm doing?!" she responds just as irritably. "I'm taking his pants!"

Then I turn and see several armed men and women heading our way.

"Natasha! We have to go! Right now!", I emphasize.

"OK!", she responds frantically, giving up on the belt and untying his shoelaces. "Just his boots then. For the snow outside."

The goons open fire on us. Back then, when my healing factor was at its peak, I could just rush right through the hail of bullets and cut into the bad guys. My injuries would have healed by the time the last thug died. But now, I would get ripped apart and bleed to death before I could even reach the first gangster.

I take cover behind a stone pillar that gets noisily peppered by automatic fire!

"Natasha!", I yell again.

"Fuck it!", she shouts in frustration.

She pries the gun from the severed hand. Then she walks into the hallway and kills them all. One shot each. All fatal. Not a single bullet wasted.

#

In the melee, we manage to escape through an unguarded window before any more mobsters show up. Natasha never did have time to get the dead man's boots, so I have to carry her piggyback through the knee-deep snow towards town.

"You OK?", I ask her.

"I'm freezing my ass off," she replies.

We both laugh.

#

A week later, and I'm back in another sleazy watering hole in Canada getting drunk. I instantly pick up Natasha's scent among all the cigarette smoke when she enters.

"Give him another one on me," she tells the bartender, as she sits next to me and leaves some bills on the countertop. "Hell, give him the whole bottle. It's the least I could do."

The bartender is still busy with another customer, but he nods in our direction.

"Stick around a while," I offer. "Have a drink."

"I can't," Natasha answers regretfully. "Still have to finish the debrief at SHIELD."

Then I ask somberly, "You ever think of getting out of the life?"

"Because of what those amateurs did to me at the factory? Please, I've had it so much worse than that. You know, you don't need to come to my rescue every time I'm in a jam."

"You'd have done the same for me."

"Damn right I would've."

"You didn't answer my question."

She sighs. "It's not as easy for the rest of us to get out of the game like you did."

"Oh, it wasn't easy. I still miss my fake eye patch."

She laughs. "Can't believe anybody actually fell for that silly disguise."

I chuckle at the memory. Then she smiles at me, leans over, and gives me a light, quick kiss on the lips.

Before I can say anything, she gets up from the bar stool and heads for the exit. She's gone by the time the bartender serves me that bottle she ordered.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
